Podcast appearances and mentions of daniel bessner

Trump's plan for Hollywood isn't really a plan, yet. He claims to want to boost the film industry – but will he revive it or wreck it even more? As he talks about tariffs on movies coming into the US, we try to pick apart what he actually means. Daniel Bessner, historian, journalist and co-host of the American Prestige podcast, joins Alex von Tunzelmann to discuss. • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. • Listen to Crime Scene – the truth behind true crime with Alison Phillips and Bernard Hogan-Howe. New from Podmasters. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Alex von Tunzelmann. Audio production: Tom Taylor. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The week's major international stories ... Trump's approach to everything ... The Houthi deal ... Trump's Middle East trip and Gaza ... India-Pakistan conflict ... Media coverage of Trump 2.0 ... Trump's biggest Jan 6 transgression ... Is the Republic at stake? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com Pre-order Glenn’s forthcoming book, SELF-CENSORSHIP. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=self-censorship–9781509567409 Video Links 0:00 Intro 1:10 Glenn meets the young Marx 2:32 The new wokeness of the political right 8:30 What is the democratic counterpart of foreign policy and national security run by experts? 17:04 Russia's […]

Danny is tired of your BS, and he's here to settle the score, once and for all! Special early morning stream--get your popcorn ready!   Check out our new bi-weekly series, "The Crisis Papers" here: https://www.patreon.com/bitterlakepresents/shop   Thank you guys again for taking the time to check this out. We appreciate each and everyone of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined,   BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron only programing, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH!   Become a patron now https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents?   Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, (specially YouTube!)   THANKS Y'ALL   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9WtLyoP9QU8sxuIfxk3eg Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thisisrevolutionpodcast/ Twitter: @TIRShowOakland Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland   Read Jason Myles in Sublation Magazine https://www.sublationmag.com/writers/jason-myles   Read Jason Myles in Damage Magazine https://damagemag.com/2023/11/07/the-man-who-sold-the-world/

What can be done to change United States foreign policy? Zachary and Emma speak to US foreign policy experts and co-hosts of the American Prestige podcast, journalist Daniel Bessner and historian Derek Davison. Daniel is the author of Democracy in Exile and Derek runs the Foreign Exchanges newsletter. They discuss the American public's engagement with foreign policy, the impacts of US global dominance, potential for a reformed policy that considers global interests, and why we shouldn't call Donald Trump a fascist. What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate. For transcripts, to join the newsletter, and for more information, visit: theprogressnetwork.org Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/theprogressnetwork And follow us on X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok: @progressntwrk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is U.S. foreign policy under President Biden really different from Trump's approach? Join us as we welcome Daniel Bessner from the American Prestige podcast to unravel this and other pressing questions, with a bold examination of leftist perspectives on international relations. We scrutinize the position of Palestine within American leftist discourse and consider whether shifts in younger generations' opinions might eventually sway U.S. foreign policy. Student protests and divestment movements are powerful in their own right but how much can they truly influence the political machinery? Our exploration doesn't stop at foreign policy. We delve deep into the political climate of today, dissecting the peculiarities of the right-wing dynamics and the enduring shadow of Cold War liberalism. What do political promises from the late 2000s tell us about the current state of political engagement and identity? We discuss how social media has crafted new narratives and ask if the retreat from active political involvement signifies a broader societal disillusionment. Join us as we question whether the decline in religiosity and the popularity of socialism among youth signal a major ideological shift or just fleeting trends.Finally, we tackle the pressing issue of AI's impact on labor, considering how white-collar jobs could face the same fate as blue-collar roles did with automation. The role of AI in reshaping the future of work is undeniable, but what are the implications for both labor and capital? We close our discussion by reflecting on the decline of humanities in universities and the shifting global power dynamics, contemplating the end of the 20th-century academic ideal and the rising influence of regional powers. Don't miss our comprehensive analysis as we navigate these complex topics with insights from our esteemed guest, Danny Bessner.Send us a text Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan

It's a small world. The great David Rieff came to my San Francisco studio today for in person interview about his new anti-woke polemic Desire and Fate. And half way through our conversation, he brought up Daniel Bessner's This Is America piece which Bessner discussed on yesterday's show. I'm not sure what that tells us about wokeness, a subject which Rieff and I aren't in agreement. For him, it's the thing-in-itself which make sense of our current cultural malaise. Thus Desire and Fate, his attempt (with a great intro from John Banville) to wake us up from Wokeness. For me, it's a distraction. I've included the full transcript below. Lots of good stuff to chew on. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 5 KEY TAKEAWAYS * Rieff views "woke" ideology as primarily American and post-Protestant in nature, rather than stemming solely from French philosophy, emphasizing its connections to self-invention and subjective identity.* He argues that woke culture threatens high culture but not capitalism, noting that corporations have readily embraced a "baudlerized" version of identity politics that avoids class discussions.* Rieff sees woke culture as connected to the wellness movement, with both sharing a preoccupation with "psychic safety" and the metaphorical transformation of experience in which "words” become a form of “violence."* He suggests young people's material insecurity contributes to their focus on identity, as those facing bleak economic prospects turn inward when they "can't make their way in the world."* Rieff characterizes woke ideology as "apocalyptic but not pessimistic," contrasting it with his own genuine pessimism which he considers more realistic about human nature and more cheerful in its acceptance of life's limitations. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, as we digest Trump 2.0, we don't talk that much these days about woke and woke ideology. There was a civil war amongst progressives, I think, on the woke front in 2023 and 2024, but with Donald Trump 2.0 and his various escapades, let's just talk these days about woke. We have a new book, however, on the threat of woke by my guest, David Rieff. It's called Desire and Fate. He wrote it in 2023, came out in late 2024. David's visiting the Bay Area. He's an itinerant man traveling from the East Coast to Latin America and Europe. David, welcome to Keen on America. Do you regret writing this book given what's happened in the last few months in the United States?David Rieff: No, not at all, because I think that the road to moral and intellectual hell is trying to censor yourself according to what you think is useful. There's a famous story of Jean Paul Sartre that he said to the stupefaction of a journalist late in his life that he'd always known about the gulag, and the journalist pretty surprised said, well, why didn't you say anything? And Sartre said so as not to demoralize the French working class. And my own view is, you know, you say what you have to say about this and if I give some aid and comfort to people I don't like, well, so be it. Having said that, I also think a lot of these woke ideas have their, for all of Trump's and Trump's people's fierce opposition to woke, some of the identity politics, particularly around Jewish identity seems to me not that very different from woke. Strangely they seem to have taken, for example, there's a lot of the talk about anti-semitism on college campuses involves student safety which is a great woke trope that you feel unsafe and what people mean by that is not literally they're going to get shot or beaten up, they mean that they feel psychically unsafe. It's part of the kind of metaphorization of experience that unfortunately the United States is now completely in the grips of. But the same thing on the other side, people like Barry Weiss, for example, at the Free Press there, they talk in the same language of psychic safety. So I'm not sure there's, I think there are more similarities than either side is comfortable with.Andrew Keen: You describe Woke, David, as a cultural revolution and you associated in the beginning of the book with something called Lumpen-Rousseauism. As we joked before we went live, I'm not sure if there's anything in Rousseau which isn't Lumpen. But what exactly is this cultural revolution? And can we blame it on bad French philosophy or Swiss French?David Rieff: Well, Swiss-French philosophy, you know exactly. There is a funny anecdote, as I'm sure you know, that Rousseau made a visit to Edinburgh to see Hume and there's something in Hume's diaries where he talks about Rousseau pacing up and down in front of the fire and suddenly exclaiming, but David Hume is not a bad man. And Hume notes in his acerbic way, Rousseau was like walking around without his skin on. And I think some of the woke sensitivity stuff is very much people walking around without their skin on. They can't stand the idea of being offended. I don't see it as much - of course, the influence of that version of cultural relativism that the French like Deleuze and Guattari and other people put forward is part of the story, but I actually see it as much more of a post-Protestant thing. This idea, in that sense, some kind of strange combination of maybe some French philosophy, but also of the wellness movement, of this notion that health, including psychic health, was the ultimate good in a secular society. And then the other part, which again, it seems to be more American than French, which is this idea, and this is particularly true in the trans movement, that you can be anything you want to be. And so that if you feel yourself to be a different gender, well, that's who you are. And what matters is your own subjective sense of these things, and it's up to you. The outside world has no say in it, it's what you feel. And that in a sense, what I mean by post-Protestant is that, I mean, what's the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism? The fundamental difference is, it seems to me, that in Roman Catholic tradition, you need the priest to intercede with God, whereas in Protestant tradition, it is, except for the Anglicans, but for most of Protestantism, it's you and God. And in that sense it seems to me there are more of what I see in woke than this notion that some of the right-wing people like Chris Rufo and others have that this is cultural French cultural Marxism making its insidious way through the institutions.Andrew Keen: It's interesting you talk about the Protestant ethic and you mentioned Hume's remark about Rousseau not having his skin on. Do you think that Protestantism enabled people to grow thick skins?David Rieff: I mean, the Calvinist idea certainly did. In fact, there were all these ideas in Protestant culture, at least that's the classical interpretation of deferred gratification. Capitalism was supposed to be the work ethic, all of that stuff that Weber talks about. But I think it got in the modern version. It became something else. It stopped being about those forms of disciplines and started to be about self-invention. And in a sense, there's something very American about that because after all you know it's the Great Gatsby. It's what's the famous sentence of F. Scott Fitzgerald's: there are no second acts in American lives.Andrew Keen: This is the most incorrect thing anyone's ever said about America. I'm not sure if he meant it to be incorrect, did he? I don't know.David Rieff: I think what's true is that you get the American idea, you get to reinvent yourself. And this notion of the dream, the dream become reality. And many years ago when I was spending a lot of time in LA in the late 80s, early 90s, at LAX, there was a sign from the then mayor, Tom Bradley, about how, you know, if you can dream it, it can be true. And I think there's a lot in identitarian woke idea which is that we can - we're not constricted by history or reality. In fact, it's all the present and the future. And so to me again, woke seems to me much more recognizable as something American and by extension post-Protestant in the sense that you see the places where woke is most powerful are in the other, what the encampment kids would call settler colonies, Australia and Canada. And now in the UK of course, where it seems to me by DI or EDI as they call it over there is in many ways stronger in Britain even than it was in the US before Trump.Andrew Keen: Does it really matter though, David? I mean, that's my question. Does it matter? I mean it might matter if you have the good or the bad fortune to teach at a small, expensive liberal arts college. It might matter with some of your dinner parties in Tribeca or here in San Francisco, but for most people, who cares?David Rieff: It doesn't matter. I think it matters to culture and so what you think culture is worth, because a lot of the point of this book was to say there's nothing about woke that threatens capitalism, that threatens the neo-liberal order. I mean it's turning out that Donald Trump is a great deal bigger threat to the neoliberal order. Woke was to the contrary - woke is about talking about everything but class. And so a kind of baudlerized, de-radicalized version of woke became perfectly fine with corporate America. That's why this wonderful old line hard lefty Adolph Reed Jr. says somewhere that woke is about diversifying the ruling class. But I do think it's a threat to high culture because it's about equity. It's about representation. And so elite culture, which I have no shame in proclaiming my loyalty to, can't survive the woke onslaught. And it hasn't, in my view. If you look at just the kinds of books that are being written, the kinds of plays that are been put on, even the opera, the new operas that are being commissioned, they're all about representing the marginalized. They're about speaking for your group, whatever that group is, and doing away with various forms of cultural hierarchy. And I'm with Schoenberg: if it's for everybody, if it's art, Schoenberg said it's not for everybody, and if it's for everybody it's not art. And I think woke destroys that. Woke can live with schlock. I'm sorry, high culture can live with schlock, it always has, it always will. What it can't live with is kitsch. And by which I mean kitsch in Milan Kundera's definition, which is to have opinions that you feel better about yourself for holding. And that I think is inimical to culture. And I think woke is very destructive of those traditions. I mean, in the most obvious sense, it's destructive of the Western tradition, but you know, the high arts in places like Japan or Bengal, I don't think it's any more sympathetic to those things than it is to Shakespeare or John Donne or whatever. So yeah, I think it's a danger in that sense. Is it a danger to the peace of the world? No, of course not.Andrew Keen: Even in cultural terms, as you explain, it is an orthodoxy. If you want to work with the dominant cultural institutions, the newspapers, the universities, the publishing houses, you have to play by those rules, but the great artists, poets, filmmakers, musicians have never done that, so all it provides, I mean you brought up Kundera, all it provides is something that independent artists, creative people will sneer at, will make fun of, as you have in this new book.David Rieff: Well, I hope they'll make fun of it. But on the other hand, I'm an old guy who has the means to sneer. I don't have to please an editor. Someone will publish my books one way or another, whatever ones I have left to write. But if you're 25 years old, maybe you're going to sneer with your pals in the pub, but you're gonna have to toe the line if you want to be published in whatever the obvious mainstream place is and you're going to be attacked on social media. I think a lot of people who are very, young people who are skeptical of this are just so afraid of being attacked by their peers on various social media that they keep quiet. I don't know that it's true that, I'd sort of push back on that. I think non-conformists will out. I hope it's true. But I wonder, I mean, these traditions, once they die, they're very hard to rebuild. And, without going full T.S. Eliot on you, once you don't think you're part of the past, once the idea is that basically, pretty much anything that came before our modern contemporary sense of morality and fairness and right opinion is to be rejected and that, for example, the moral character of the artist should determine whether or not the art should be paid attention to - I don't know how you come back from that or if you come back from that. I'm not convinced you do. No, other arts will be around. And I mean, if I were writing a critical review of my own book, I'd say, look, this culture, this high culture that you, David Rieff, are writing an elegy for, eulogizing or memorializing was going to die anyway, and we're at the beginning of another Gutenbergian epoch, just as Gutenberg, we're sort of 20 years into Marshall McLuhan's Gutenberg galaxy, and these other art forms will come, and they won't be like anything else. And that may be true.Andrew Keen: True, it may be true. In a sense then, to extend that critique, are you going full T.S. Eliot in this book?David Rieff: Yeah, I think Eliot was right. But it's not just Eliot, there are people who would be for the wokesters more acceptable like Mandelstam, for example, who said you're part of a conversation that's been going on long before you were born, that's going to be going on after you are, and I think that's what art is. I think the idea that we make some completely new thing is a childish fantasy. I think you belong to a tradition. There are periods - look, this is, I don't find much writing in English in prose fiction very interesting. I have to say I read the books that people talk about because I'm trying to understand what's going on but it doesn't interest me very much, but again, there have been periods of great mediocrity. Think of a period in the late 17th century in England when probably the best poet was this completely, rightly, justifiably forgotten figure, Colley Cibber. You had the great restoration period and then it all collapsed, so maybe it'll be that way. And also, as I say, maybe it's just as with the print revolution, that this new culture of social media will produce completely different forms. I mean, everything is mortal, not just us, but cultures and civilizations and all the rest of it. So I can imagine that, but this is the time I live in and the tradition I come from and I'm sorry it's gone, and I think what's replacing it is for the most part worse.Andrew Keen: You're critical in the book of what you, I'm quoting here, you talk about going from the grand inquisitor to the grand therapist. But you're very critical of the broader American therapeutic culture of acute sensitivity, the thin skin nature of, I guess, the Rousseau in this, whatever, it's lumpen Rousseauanism. So how do you interpret that without psychologizing, or are you psychologizing in the book? How are you making sense of our condition? In other words, can one critique criticize therapeutic culture without becoming oneself therapeutic?David Rieff: You mean the sort of Pogo line, we've met the enemy and it is us. Well, I suppose there's some truth to that. I don't know how much. I think that woke is in some important sense a subset of the wellness movement. And the wellness movement after all has tens and tens of millions of people who are in one sense or another influenced by it. And I think health, including psychic health, and we've moved from wellness as corporal health to wellness as being both soma and psyche. So, I mean, if that's psychologizing, I certainly think it's drawing the parallel or seeing woke in some ways as one of the children of the god of wellness. And that to me, I don't know how therapeutic that is. I think it's just that once you feel, I'm interested in what people feel. I'm not necessarily so interested in, I mean, I've got lots of opinions, but what I think I'm better at than having opinions is trying to understand why people think what they think. And I do think that once health becomes the ultimate good in a secular society and once death becomes the absolutely unacceptable other, and once you have the idea that there's no real distinction of any great validity between psychic and physical wellness, well then of course sensitivity to everything becomes almost an inevitable reaction.Andrew Keen: I was reading the book and I've been thinking about a lot of movements in America which are trying to bring people together, dealing with America, this divided America, as if it's a marriage in crisis. So some of the most effective or interesting, I think, thinkers on this, like Arlie Hochschild in Berkeley, use the language of therapy to bring or to try to bring America back together, even groups like the Braver Angels. Can therapy have any value or that therapeutic culture in a place like America where people are so bitterly divided, so hateful towards one another?David Rieff: Well, it's always been a country where, on the one hand, people have been, as you say, incredibly good at hatred and also a country of people who often construe themselves as misfits and heretics from the Puritans forward. And on the other hand, you have that small-town American idea, which sometimes I think is as important to woke and DI as as anything else which is that famous saying of small town America of all those years ago which was if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all. And to some extent that is, I think, a very powerful ancestor of these movements. Whether they're making any headway - of course I hope they are, but Hochschild is a very interesting figure, but I don't, it seems to me it's going all the other way, that people are increasingly only talking to each other.Andrew Keen: What this movement seems to want to do is get beyond - I use this word carefully, I'm not sure if they use it but I'm going to use it - ideology and that we're all prisoners of ideology. Is woke ideology or is it a kind of post-ideology?David Rieff: Well, it's a redemptive idea, a restorative idea. It's an idea that in that sense, there's a notion that it's time for the victims, for the first to be last and the last to be first. I mean, on some level, it is as simple as that. On another level, as I say, I do think it has a lot to do with metaphorization of experience, that people say silence is violence and words are violence and at that point what's violence? I mean there is a kind of level to me where people have gotten trapped in the kind of web of their own metaphors and now are living by them or living shackled to them or whatever image you're hoping for. But I don't know what it means to get beyond ideology. What, all men will be brothers, as in the Beethoven-Schiller symphony? I mean, it doesn't seem like that's the way things are going.Andrew Keen: Is the problem then, and I'm thinking out loud here, is the problem politics or not enough politics?David Rieff: Oh, I think the problem is that now we don't know, we've decided that everything is part, the personal is the political, as the feminists said, 50, 60 years ago. So the personal's political, so the political is the personal. So you have to live the exemplary moral life, or at least the life that doesn't offend anybody or that conforms to whatever the dominant views of what good opinions are, right opinions are. I think what we're in right now is much more the realm of kind of a new set of moral codes, much more than ideology in the kind of discrete sense of politics.Andrew Keen: Now let's come back to this idea of being thin-skinned. Why are people so thin-skinned?David Rieff: Because, I mean, there are lots of things to say about that. One thing, of course, that might be worth saying, is that the young generations, people who are between, let's say, 15 and 30, they're in real material trouble. It's gonna be very hard for them to own a house. It's hard for them to be independent and unless the baby boomers like myself will just transfer every penny to them, which doesn't seem very likely frankly, they're going to live considerably worse than generations before. So if you can't make your way in the world then maybe you make your way yourself or you work on yourself in that sort of therapeutic sense. You worry about your own identity because the only place you have in the world in some way is yourself, is that work, that obsession. I do think some of these material questions are important. There's a guy you may know who's not at all woke, a guy who teaches at the University of Washington called Danny Bessner. And I just did a show with him this morning. He's a smart guy and we have a kind of ironic correspondence over email and DM. And I once said to him, why are you so bitter about everything? And he said, you want to know why? Because I have two children and the likelihood is I'll never get a teaching job that won't require a three hour commute in order for me to live anywhere that I can afford to live. And I thought, and he couldn't be further from woke, he's a kind of Jacobin guy, Jacobin Magazine guy, and if he's left at all, it's kind of old left, but I think a lot of people feel that, that they feel their practical future, it looks pretty grim.Andrew Keen: But David, coming back to the idea of art, they're all suited to the world of art. They don't have to buy a big house and live in the suburbs. They can become poets. They can become filmmakers. They can put their stuff up on YouTube. They can record their music online. There are so many possibilities.David Rieff: It's hard to monetize that. Maybe now you're beginning to sound like the people you don't like. Now you're getting to sound like a capitalist.Andrew Keen: So what? Well, I don't care if I sound like a capitalist. You're not going to starve to death.David Rieff: Well, you might not like, I mean, it's fine to be a barista at 24. It's not so fine at 44. And are these people going to ever get out of this thing? I don't know. I wonder. Look, when I was starting as a writer, as long as you were incredibly diligent, and worked really hard, you could cobble together at least a basic living by accepting every assignment and people paid you bits and bobs of money, but put together, you could make a living. Now, the only way to make money, unless you're lucky enough to be on staff of a few remaining media outlets that remain, is you have to become an impresario, you have become an entrepreneur of your own stuff. And again, sure, do lots of people manage that? Yeah, but not as many as could have worked in that other system, and look at the fate of most newspapers, all folding. Look at the universities. We can talk about woke and how woke destroyed, in my view anyway, a lot of the humanities. But there's also a level in which people didn't want to study these things. So we're looking at the last generation in a lot places of a lot of these humanities departments and not just the ones that are associated with, I don't know, white supremacy or the white male past or whatever, but just the humanities full stop. So I know if that sounds like, maybe it sounds like a capitalist, but maybe it also sounds like you know there was a time when the poets - you know very well, poets never made a living, poets taught in universities. That's the way American poets made their money, including pretty famous poets like Eric Wolcott or Joseph Brodsky or writers, Toni Morrison taught at Princeton all those years, Joyce Carol Oates still alive, she still does. Most of these people couldn't make a living of their work and so the university provided that living.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Barry Weiss earlier. She's making a fortune as an anti-woke journalist. And Free Press seems to be thriving. Yascha Mounk's Persuasion is doing pretty well. Andrew Sullivan, another good example, making a fortune off of Substack. It seems as if the people willing to take risks, Barry Weiss leaving the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan leaving everything he's ever joined - that's...David Rieff: Look, are there going to be people who thrive in this new environment? Sure. And Barry Weiss turns out to be this kind of genius entrepreneur. She deserves full credit for that. Although even Barry Weiss, the paradox for me of Barry Weiss is, a lot of her early activism was saying that she felt unsafe with these anti-Israeli teachers at Columbia. So in a sense, she was using some of the same language as the woke use, psychic safety, because she didn't mean Joseph Massad was gonna come out from the blackboard and shoot her in the eye. She meant that she was offended and used the language of safety to describe that. And so in that sense, again, as I was saying to you earlier, I think there are more similarities here. And Trump, I think this is a genuine counterrevolution that Trump is trying to mount. I'm not very interested in the fascism, non-fascism debate. I'm rather skeptical of it.Andrew Keen: As Danny Bessner is. Yeah, I thought Danny's piece about that was brilliant.David Rieff: We just did a show about it today, that piece about why that's all rubbish. I was tempted, I wrote to a friend that guy you may know David Bell teaches French history -Andrew Keen: He's coming on the show next week. Well, you see, it's just a little community of like-minded people.David Rieff: There you go. Well, I wrote to David.Andrew Keen: And you mentioned his father in the book, Daniel.David Rieff: Yeah, well, his father is sort of one of the tutelary idols of the book. I had his father and I read his father and I learned an enormous amount. I think that book about the cultural contradictions of capitalism is one of the great prescient books about our times. But I wrote to David, I said, I actually sent him the Bessner piece which he was quite ambivalent about. But I said well, I'm not really convinced by the fascism of Trump, maybe just because Hitler read books, unlike Donald Trump. But it's a genuine counterrevolution. And what element will change the landscape in terms of DI and woke and identitarianism is not clear. These people are incredibly ambitious. They really mean to change this country, transform it.Andrew Keen: But from the book, David, Trump's attempts to cleanse, if that's the right word, the university, I would have thought you'd have rather admired that, all these-David Rieff: I agree with some of it.Andrew Keen: All these idiots writing the same article for 30 years about something that no one has any interest in.David Rieff: I look, my problem with Trump is that I do support a lot of that. I think some of the stuff that Christopher Rufo, one of the leading ideologues of this administration has uncovered about university programs and all of this crap, I think it's great that they're not paying for it anymore. The trouble is - you asked me before, is it that important? Is culture important compared to destroying the NATO alliance, blowing up the global trade regime? No. I don't think. So yeah, I like a lot of what they're doing about the university, I don't like, and I am very fiercely opposed to this crackdown on speech. That seems to be grotesque and revolting, but are they canceling supporting transgender theater in Galway? Yeah, I think it's great that they're canceling all that stuff. And so I'm not, that's my problem with Trump, is that some of that stuff I'm quite unashamedly happy about, but it's not nearly worth all the damage he's doing to this country and the world.Andrew Keen: Being very generous with your time, David. Finally, in the book you describe woke as, and I thought this was a very sharp way of describing it, describe it as being apocalyptic but not pessimistic. What did you mean by that? And then what is the opposite of woke? Would it be not apocalyptic, but cheerful?David Rieff: Well, I think genuine pessimists are cheerful, I would put myself among those. The model is Samuel Beckett, who just thinks things are so horrible that why not be cheerful about them, and even express one's pessimism in a relatively cheerful way. You remember the famous story that Thomas McCarthy used to tell about walking in the Luxembourg Gardens with Beckett and McCarthy says to him, great day, it's such a beautiful day, Sam. Beckett says, yeah, beautiful day. McCarthy says, makes you glad to be alive. And Beckett said, oh, I wouldn't go that far. And so, the genuine pessimist is quite cheerful. But coming back to woke, it's apocalyptic in the sense that everything is always at stake. But somehow it's also got this reformist idea that cultural revolution will cleanse away the sins of the supremacist patriarchal past and we'll head for the sunny uplands. I think I'm much too much of a pessimist to think that's possible in any regime, let alone this rather primitive cultural revolution called woke.Andrew Keen: But what would the opposite be?David Rieff: The opposite would be probably some sense that the best we're going to do is make our peace with the trash nature of existence, that life is finite in contrast with the wellness people who probably have a tendency towards the apocalyptic because death is an insult to them. So everything is staving off the bad news and that's where you get this idea that you can, like a lot of revolutions, you can change the nature of people. Look, the communist, Che Guevara talked about the new man. Well, I wonder if he thought it was so new when he was in Bolivia. I think these are - people need utopias, this is one of them, MAGA is another utopia by the way, and people don't seem to be able to do without them and that's - I wish it were otherwise but it isn't.Andrew Keen: I'm guessing the woke people would be offended by the idea of death, are they?David Rieff: Well, I think the woke people, in this synchronicity, people and a lot of people, they're insulted - how can this happen to me, wonderful me? And this is those jokes in the old days when the British could still be savage before they had to have, you know, Henry the Fifth be played by a black actor - why me? Well, why not you? That's just so alien to and it's probably alien to the American idea. You're supposed to - it's supposed to work out and the truth is it doesn't work out. But La Rochefoucauld says somewhere no one can stare for too long at death or the sun and maybe I'm asking too much.Andrew Keen: Maybe only Americans can find death unacceptable to use one of your words.David Rieff: Yes, perhaps.Andrew Keen: Well, David Rieff, congratulations on the new book. Fascinating, troubling, controversial as always. Desire and Fate. I know you're writing a book about Oppenheimer, very different kind of subject. We'll get you back on the show to talk Oppenheimer, where I guess there's not going to be a lot of Lumpen-Rousseauism.David Rieff: Very little, very little love and Rousseau in the quantum mechanics world, but thanks for having me.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Liberals won't like it, but according to the Seattle based historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner, Trump's wannabe imperial presidency is a “natural outgrowth” of the centralized power of the FDR presidency. In a provocative Jacobin piece, Bessner contends that executive power has been expanding since FDR, with the U.S. President increasingly becoming an "elected monarch." The leftist Bessner criticizes American liberals for both obsessing over the fictional specter of fascism and for failing to address the economic inequality that enabled the rise of Trump. And he expresses pessimism about meaningful reform, arguing that 21st century capitalism has become too entrenched for significant changes without some dramatic external shock. 5 Takeaways from the Bessner Interview* Trump's presidency represents a continuation of American traditions rather than fascism, with his immigration policies echoing historical patterns like the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism.* The significant shift under Trump is his aggressive tariff policy against China, which represents a departure from decades of neoliberal economic approaches.* Presidential power has been expanding dramatically since FDR (who issued over 3,700 executive orders), creating what Bessner calls an "elected monarch" with increasingly unchecked authority.* The failure of liberal leadership, particularly Obama's inadequate response to the 2008 financial crisis and insufficient economic redistribution, created the conditions for Trump's rise.* Bessner expresses deep pessimism about the possibility of meaningful reform, suggesting that capitalism has become too entrenched globally for significant democratic changes without some external shock like climate disaster or war.Daniel Bessner is an historian and journalist. He is currently the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He previously held the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization and is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an Associate of the Alameda Institute, and a Contributing Editor at Jacobin. In 2019-2020, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign; in 2024, for unclear reasons, the Russian government sanctioned him. Daniel is an intellectual historian, and his work has focused on three areas of inquiry: the history and contemporary practice of U.S. foreign relations; the history and theory of liberalism; and, most recently, the history and practice of the entertainment industry. He is the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual (Cornell, 2018), which you may order here. He is also the co-editor, with Nicolas Guilhot, of The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2019), which you may order here; and the co-editor, with Michael Brenes, of Rethinking U.S. World Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations (Palgrave, 2024), which you may order here. In addition to his scholarship, he has published pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Nation, n+1, and other venues. In July 2022, he published a cover story in Harper's Magazine titled “Empire Burlesque: What Comes After the American Century?”; in May 2024, he published a cover story, also in Harper's, titled “The Life and Death of Hollywood: Film and Television Writers Face an Existential Threat,” which was also republished as the cover of the Italian magazine Internazionale.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Is America (and Europe) descending into fascism? And can the term ever be applicable outside the specific historical context of interwar Europe? To review the "fascism debate" of Trump I and revisit it given the political shifts in the US and Europe since 2020, Ted speaks with Daniel Bessner of the American Prestige podcast. Danny is a firm "no" and he tries to stop Ted from drifting into the "yes" camp. Listen and decide for yourself.Read Danny's piece in TNR here: https://newrepublic.com/article/170890/does-american-fascism-existFor one of the prominent "yes" voices, see John Ganz here: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-march-on-rome-one-century-laterSee the meme Ted made that (re)started the conversation: https://x.com/ted_knudsen/status/1899556117916573975*****Follow Spaßbremse on Twitter (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@spassbremse_pod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lee Rosevere⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Art by Franziska Schneider.Support us on Patreon here: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/spassbremse

Is America (and Europe) descending into fascism? And can the term ever be applicable outside the specific historical context of interwar Europe? To review the "fascism debate" of Trump I and revisit it given the political shifts in the US and Europe since 2020, Ted speaks with Daniel Bessner of the American Prestige podcast. Danny is a firm "no" and he tries to stop Ted from drifting into the "yes" camp. Listen and decide for yourself.Read Danny's piece in TNR here: https://newrepublic.com/article/170890/does-american-fascism-existFor one of the prominent "yes" voices, see John Ganz here: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-march-on-rome-one-century-laterSee the meme Ted made that (re)started the conversation: https://x.com/ted_knudsen/status/1899556117916573975*****Follow Spaßbremse on Twitter (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@spassbremse_pod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lee Rosevere⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Art by Franziska Schneider.Support us on Patreon here: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/spassbremse

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Daniel Bessner on a radical critic's achievements and the limits of protest.For nearly seven decades, Noam Chomsky has been the most important critic of American foreign policy. Daniel Besser, co-host of the Nation podcast American Prestige, recently reviewed for the magazine a new book authored by Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism. In his review, Daniel both extolled Chomsky's monumental achievement and raised questions about the weakness of antiwar movements in challenging the terrible policies that Chomsky has so diligently analyzed.Daniel and I talked about Chomsky's legacy as well as the way the establishment has been able to success thwart popular resistance.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For nearly seven decades, Noam Chomsky has been the most important critic of American foreign policy. Daniel Besser, co-host of the Nation podcast, American Prestige, recently reviewed for the magazine a new book authored by Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism. In his review, Daniel both extolled Chomsky's monumental achievement and raised questions about the weakness of antiwar movements in challenging the terrible policies that Chomsky has so diligently analyzed.Daniel and I talked about Chomsky's legacy as well as the way the establishment has been able to success thwart popular resistance.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What could go right with Trump's foreign policy? ... Trump's Bibi-pleasing Middle East path ... How would Europe-led defence of Europe work? ... What most miss about the Oval Office blowup ... Has relying on America doomed Ukraine? ... Heading to Overtime ...

What could go right with Trump's foreign policy? ... Trump's Bibi-pleasing Middle East path ... How would Europe-led defence of Europe work? ... What most miss about the Oval Office blowup ... Has relying on America doomed Ukraine? ... Heading to Overtime ...

Welcome to Season 7! As we are now a quarter of the way through the 21st century, like Bill Murray in Tootsie, Paul and Corey are asking, “What happened?” This season we are looking at the trends, genres, styles, and more that make up cinema of the past 25 years. First up, Paul has chosen Clint Eastwood's Juror #2 (2024), a film whose distribution by Warner Brothers Discovery is as fraught as the experience of the titular juror himself! Lots to discuss from the gig economy to Daniel Bessner's article The Life and Death of Hollywood to personal ethics in the face of neoliberal decay. Because the film is so new, we do recommend you watch before listening.

On Trump's foreign policy, the 2nd time round. Historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner joins Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Lee Jones to ask how this era of rot and decay will proceed under Trump II, from Ukraine to China and beyond. We discuss: Will we see "America First transactionalism"? Does Trump have a capable cadre to bend the state to his will? What will Trump's relationship be to the deep state? How important are generational splits in attitudes to the US empire? Will there be a peace deal in Ukraine? Where does that leave 'Atlanticism'? Is confrontation with China baked in? Is the Middle East the key to world peace? Links: EU blows hot and cold over Trump, Benoît Bréville, Le Monde diplomatique America First, Russia, & Ukraine, Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, Fred Fleitz, AFPI Empire's Critic: The Worlds of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Bessner, The Nation /171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner  /142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

Guest Daniel Bessner of The American Prestige Podcast joins the Un-Diplomatic livestream to talk about many topics. Is international relations dead or just irrelevant? Where did Democrats go more wrong, on domestic or foreign policy? What was the problem with Noam Chomsky's theory of change? And what even is a crisis of liberalism? Subscribe to The American Prestige Podcast: https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/listen Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Catch Un-Diplomatic on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/undiplomaticpodcast

Listen to the "What the Hell is Grunge" playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40Y5GsXRaJzuJmz24BYAG8?si=Lf3hHZMuQFq1TpcNiVcPiA We'll be discussing "grunge"? Where did it come from and where did it go? I'll be joined by a friend of show, Daniel Bessner.   Check out our new series "The Crisis Papers" here: https://www.patreon.com/bitterlakepresents/shop   Thank you guys again for taking the time to check this out.   We appreciate each and everyone of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined,   BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron only programing, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH!   Become a patron now https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents?   Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, (specially YouTube!)   THANKS Y'ALL   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9WtLyoP9QU8sxuIfxk3eg Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast www.twitch.tv/leftflankvets​ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thisisrevolutionpodcast/ Twitter: @TIRShowOakland Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland   Read Jason Myles in Sublation Magazine https://www.sublationmag.com/writers/jason-myles   Read Jason Myles in Damage Magazine https://damagemag.com/2023/11/07/the-man-who-sold-the-world/

The NonZero-American Prestige punk-rock crossover continues ... Is it time to freak out about Trump? ... Are international norms eroding? ... Jimmy Carter's legacy ... Heading to Overtime ...

The NonZero-American Prestige punk-rock crossover continues ... Is it time to freak out about Trump? ... Are international norms eroding? ... Jimmy Carter's legacy ... Heading to Overtime ...

What is the point of Hollywood? There are two obvious answers, right? To make good stuff that entertains people. And to make money for the big studios and the people who work for them.Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. But writer Daniel Bessner believes increasingly they have been.Bessner spent a year working on a deep dive into how Hollywood has evolved for Harper's Magazine, called “The Life and Death of Hollywood”. Bessner is also a historian and host of the podcast “American Prestige”. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson last April.

On this episode of American Prestige, hosts Derek Davison and Daniel Bessner are joined by Ben Fong of Arizona State University for a two-part discussion of his book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge. In this episode, the group covers everything from coffee to opiates to antidepressants, how they interact with capitalist society, the CIA, commodity fetishism, licit vs. illicit as distinct from legal vs. illegal, and more.Check out more of Ben's work at his Substack on labor and logistics, On the Seams.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

After the election, there was a hurricane of postmortems attempting to explain why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Eschewing small-bore analysis, historian Daniel Bessner posted on X, "I feel like people are missing the fundamental lesson of the election: it is not the Democratic Party that is in crisis; liberalism itself is in crisis." Liberalism—the dominant political philosophy of the American Century—appears to be a spent force amid a wave of illiberal populism and anti-establishment politics. In this episode, Bessner, who co-hosts American Prestige podcast, delves into the origins of liberalism's rise and apparent decline in this post-post-Cold War period. Further reading: Empire Burlesque: What Comes After the American Century? by Daniel Bessner (Harper's)

Originally Published 08/22/22On today's episode Jack and Leslie are joined by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of American Prestige. We discuss Liz Cheney's devastating primary loss, Obama's media career, and Biden going double or nothing with COVID.Guest Links: https://www.americanprestigepod.com/Visit our website at http://sesh.showSupport the show by subscribing: http://patreon.com/strugglesession | https://strugglesession.supercast.com/Please leave us a 5 star review at Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/struggle-session/id1265384284Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thestrugglesessionCheck out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@StruggleSessionpodcastSend an email or voicemail to thestrugglesession@gmail.com Keep up with and contact Leslie: https://msha.ke/lleeiiiStruggle Session Theme by Brendan James: https://thegreatvorelli.bandcamp.com/Additional Music by Universfield from PatreonBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/struggle-session--5842028/support.

Another high-synergy, brilliant collaboration ... Is Elon our first true oligarch? ... Trump assembles his Justice League of hawks ... Biden's awful foreign policy team ... Trump's plan to purge the military ... Will Trump go full-on authoritarian? ... Left-wing capitalists—and a discount offer ...

Another high-synergy, brilliant collaboration ... Is Elon our first true oligarch? ... Trump assembles his Justice League of hawks ... Biden's awful foreign policy team ... Trump's plan to purge the military ... Will Trump go full-on authoritarian? ... Left-wing capitalists—and a discount offer ...

On this edition of Parallax Views, we continue our post-mortem of the 2024 election with two separate and distinguished guests. In the first segment, Stephen Semler of the date-based political blog Polygraph joins the show to discuss his articles "A couple charts to explain a Harris loss" and the facetiously titled "'The economy is fine'". Stephen delves into how the economy played a role in this election, and addresses criticisms by some pundits that economic anxieties could not have played a role in the election because the economy is doing well by some metrics and statistics (for example: low unemployment, a booming stock market, etc.). We'll delve into the difference between the economy and average American's economic well-being, and we'll look at two graphs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Census Bureau that deal with food insecurity and poverty to further elucidate Stephen's analysis. We'll also delve into Biden's Build Back Better and American Rescue Plans and how certain elements of Bidenomics in spring of 2022 got sidelined in a way that may have led to economic whiplash for American voters. In the second segment of the show, Daniel Bessner, known for his work at the Quincy Institute and Jacobin as well as co-hosting the left-leaning foreign policy/international relations podcast American Prestige, returns to the program to give his own analysis of the 2024 election's outcome and what he expects from a 2nd Trump Presidency. We'll discuss the feeling that there's been a more muted response to this election that in 2016, the question of Trump and fascism and why Danny prefers to discuss Trump as a reactionary populist with authoritarian inclinations, Trump as a PT Barnum-esque carny barker character mixed with shades of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, Trump and his promises of mass deportation, what Trump means for climate change, populism and anti-establishment backlash in the 2024 election, what Danny expects out of Trump's foreign policy (with regards to Ukraine and Russia, China, Iran, and Israel/Palestine), and, most significantly, the crisis of liberalism. In regard to the crisis of liberalism we'll mention Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" hypothesis, the decline of civic institutions since the 1960s (and maybe even before), Clinton-era liberalism (colored by the primacy of Third Way neoliberalism in the Democratic Party) vs. FDR's New Deal liberalism, the liberal international order and great power politics, and much, much more.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com In this post-show conversation with my creative director Nikita Petrov, I review this week’s episode with historian Daniel Bessner. We also talk about Trump’s policy proposals, capitalism, Russia and Ukraine, NATO, and why I sometimes pull back from speaking my mind. […]

We talk some Marxism, and then Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast join us to talk about their article "America Must Grapple With the Limits of Ukraine's Kursk Offensive":https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/america-must-grapple-limits-ukraines-kursk-offensive-212795Order Ben's Palestine pamphlet:https://everyday-analysis.sellfy.store/p/four-essays-on-palestine-by-ben-burgis-print-and-digital-edition/Petition for the Smith College workers:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJQYFJvYHoxnVFEBJfKqNR3eeyvWrc5RTw4zsYpBcEgSZpyw/viewformFollow Danny on Twitter: @dbessnerFollow Derek on Twitter: @dwdavisonFollow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgisFollow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_ShowBecome a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every Monday night to our undying love and gratitude for helping us keep this thing going:patreon.com/benburgisRead the weekly philosophy Substack:benburgis.substack.comVisit benburgis.com

On this episode of American Prestige, Daniel Bessner interviews Derek Davison on whether he sees any way out of the status quo in Western/North Atlantic politics.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said emeritus professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, is back on the program joining Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison for a discussion of where things stand regarding Palestine, the diaspora, and the Palestinian national movement. We talk about the abysmal state of US politics around the issue, Western and Israeli media coverage, the generational shift in Americans' outlook, Palestinian nationalism in the wake of the past year's onslaught, Fatah, current regional governing structures and the prospect of democracy, and more.Be sure to check out our series with Dr. Khalidi, A History of Modern Palestine. You can grab a copy of his book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Would a different US president have made a difference for Gaza? ... Saudi-Israel normalization takes a step back ... Is all hope lost for a two-state solution? ... Making sense of Israel's pager attacks in Lebanon ... Heading to Overtime—and an AP PSA ...

Would a different US president have made a difference for Gaza? ... Saudi-Israel normalization takes a step back ... Is all hope lost for a two-state solution? ... Making sense of Israel's pager attacks in Lebanon ... Heading to Overtime—and an AP PSA ...

Something is going terribly wrong with Hollywood. The movie industry is shrinking, its revenue is down and its employees are being forced out. Fewer major studios are making fewer movies. But why? What is leading this mass creative exodus, and can the engine of America's movie industry be saved? Pop culture historian Daniel Bessner answers this in his exhaustive Harper's Bazaar piece entitled ‘The Life and Death of Hollywood', which he discusses with Andrew Harrison in The Bunker.    The Life and Death of Hollywood, Harper's Bazaar, by Daniel Bessner: https://harpers.org/archive/2024/05/the-life-and-death-of-hollywood-daniel-bessner/   We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit.   www.patreon.com/bunkercast   Written and presented by Podmasters Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Produced by Eliza Davis Beard. Audio production by Tom Taylor. Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. Art by James Parrett. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production   www.podmasters.co.uk   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Barry Levinson and David Mamet's WAG THE DOG (1997), a political spin-doctor teams with a movie producer to fake a war and save an incumbent president. You've heard of manufacturing consent, but to what extent can Hollywood and Washington manufacture reality? We're joined by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast to discuss.Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Barry Levinson and David Mamet's WAG THE DOG (1997), a political spin-doctor teams with a movie producer to fake a war and save an incumbent president. You've heard of manufacturing consent, but to what extent can Hollywood and Washington manufacture reality? We're joined by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast to discuss. Check out American Prestige - https://www.americanprestigepod.com/ Join us on Patreon for an extra episode every week - https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus

In this episode, I talk with author and novelist about his recent hybrid memoir and cultural exploration, Always Crashing in the Same Car. We discuss his fascination with figures who faced creative crises in Hollywood, from F. Scott Fitzgerald, filmmaker Hal Ashby or musician Warren Zevon to more overlooked but similarly brilliant figures like Carole Eastman, the screenwriter of the 1970s classic Five Easy Pieces.We also explore the realities of growing up in LA, including being “celebrity-adjacent.” That's perhaps best illustrated by the time Marlon Brando left an incredible monologue in the form of a voicemail. We do a deep dive into the attraction of hybrid memoir for fiction writer, Matthew's approach to research, and whether it's possible any longer to be a middle-class creative in Hollywood.--------------------------“All of those kind of impulses fused in me, and eventually, and I sort of realized, like, oh, this is what I want to write. I want to write a book that's a memoir that isn't about me, or a memoir that's only kind of, you know, partly about me.”--------------------------Key Takeaways* Always Crashing In the Same Car pays homage to figures who've faced both genius and marginalization in Hollywood, including Thomas McGuane, Renata Adler, Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Hal Ashby, Michael Cimino, Warren Zevon & more. The book is about “those who failed, faltered, and whose triumphs are punctuated by flops...”* Matthew shares his fascination with Carol Eastman, best known for Five Easy Pieces. He was deeply touched by her prose writings, comparing her to poets like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens.* The book and the interview also delves more deeply into women's contributions to Hollywood, focusing on other overlooked talents like Eleanor Perry and Elaine May. Matthew reflects on his mother, a one-time screenwriter, and how her generation had less opportunity to develop their skills.* Why a hybrid memoir? Matthew was reading, and inspired by, writers like Hilton Als, Heidi Julavits, and Olivia Laing. He wanted to create a narrative that wasn't limited to—or rather moved beyond—the self, weaving together cultural criticism about Hollywood and creative crises.* We talk a lot about voice, which Matthew says is crucial for him to discover early on. “Once I can locate the voice for any piece of writing... I have it in the pocket,” he says. The narrator of this book blends personal reflections with a noir quality, he says.* Matthew sees himself as a novelist at heart. He considers the narrative tools of a novelist indispensable, even when writing memoirs and cultural critiques: “I am fundamentally a novelist….I think that's part of being a fiction writer or novelist is, you know, anything that you write is a kind of criticism in code. You're always responding to other texts.”* Matthew begins by explaining his unique research style: "I'm kind of ravenous and a little deranged about it…” His research process involves intuitive dives, like a two-day blitz through Carol Eastman's archives.* The discussion also touched on Matthew's upbringing with a mom who was a one-time screenwriter and who crossed the picket line during one writer's strike, and his father, who had modest beginnings but went on to become a famous Hollywood “superagent” representing Marlon Brando, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren & many others.* At the same time, Matthew explores misconceptions around Hollywood glitz, addressing the middle-class reality of many involved in the film industry. For a long-time, Hollywood could support such middle-class creatives, Matthew contends, something that is no longer really possible.* Addressing the evolution of the entertainment industry, Matthew notes the shift towards debt servicing, influenced by corporate acquisitions. This financial pragmatism often overrides the creative impulse, squeezing the middle class out.* Another takeaway? The creative world, especially in Hollywood, is fraught with periods of drift and struggle. In one sense, Always Crashing In the Same Car is a love letter to that state of things.--------------------------"I still kind of think of [Always Crashing…] as being secretly a novel. Not because it's full of made up s**t…but because I think sometimes our idea of what a novel is is pretty limited. You know, there's no reason why a novel can't be, like, 98% fact."--------------------------About Matthew SpecktorMatthew Specktor's books include the novels That Summertime Sound and American Dream Machine, which was long-listed for the Folio Prize; the memoir-in-criticism Always Crashing in The Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California, and The Golden Hour, forthcoming from Ecco Press. Born in Los Angeles, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College in 2009. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, The Paris Review, Tin House, Black Clock, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. He is a founding editor of the Los Angles Review of Books.Resources:Books by Matthew Specktor:* Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California* American Dream Machine* That Summertime Sound* Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz, introduction by Matthew SpecktorReferenced on this episode:* The Women, by Hilton Als* Low, by David Bowie* The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, The Last Tycoon, The Pat Hobby Stories, and The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald* F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips* The Folded Clock: A Diary, by Heidi Julavits* The Lonely City, by Olivia Laing* 300 Arguments, by Sarah Manguso* “Bombast: Carole Eastman,” by Nick Pinkerton* “The Life and Death of Hollywood,” by Daniel Bessner, Harper's, May 2024.CreditsThis episode was produced by Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music  is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions. Get full access to The Book I Want to Write at bookiwanttowrite.substack.com/subscribe

The Nonzero-American Prestige all-star team ... Why didn't the Trump shooting matter more? ... What anti-Trump historians get wrong ... Why Kamala shouldn't demonize Trump ... Heading to Overtime—and a discount deal ...

The Nonzero-American Prestige all-star team ... Why didn't the Trump shooting matter more? ... What anti-Trump historians get wrong ... Why Kamala shouldn't demonize Trump ... Heading to Overtime—and a discount deal ...

Rivka and Frank are joined by historian and co-host of the American Prestige podcast, Daniel Bessner, to discuss Joe Dante's 1990 cult classic, Gremlins 2: The New Batch. They explore the film's anti-capitalist themes, its self-aware satire of franchised movie sequels, and, naturally, which Gremlin has the best politics. The Life & Death of Hollywood (Harper's Magazine) American Prestige Podcast

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer and Daniel Bessner discuss what corporate monopolies are doing to the dream factory.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Nonzero-American Prestige apocalypse aversion project ... Are Bob, Derek, and Danny surprised the Gaza war is still going on? ... Biden's simple political calculus on Gaza ... Would Trump greenlight the ethnic cleansing of Gaza? ... Israel's plan (or lack thereof) for post-war Gaza ... Heading to Overtime ...

The Nonzero-American Prestige apocalypse aversion project ... Are Bob, Derek, and Danny surprised the Gaza war is still going on? ... Biden's simple political calculus on Gaza ... Would Trump greenlight the ethnic cleansing of Gaza? ... Israel's plan (or lack thereof) for post-war Gaza ... Heading to Overtime ...

Behind the News, 5/16/24 - guests: Annelle Sheline on her resignation from the State Department to protest Gaza • Daniel Bessner on changing relations of production in Hollywood - Doug Henwood

Four years ago, Daniel Bessner spoke with the legendary engineer, producer, and musician who died on May 7, 2024. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Read Daniel's piece in Harper's Magazine Here: https://harpers.org/.../the-life-and-death-of-hollywood.../   Is Hollywood still the magical place where one's dreams of movie stardom can come true? Has financialization taken over the mindset of studios. Have we replaced gutsy studio execs who greenlit passion projects inspired by a "feeling", and made way for the corporate efficiency model?   We'll discuss the current state of Hollywood, and how it got there with friend of show Daniel Bessner.   Get Tickets for the TIR Live Show in DC June 8th (You can also purchase Tickets for the livestream if you can't make it to DC)   Get Tickets here:https://www.eventbrite.com/.../clr-james-and-the-struggle... Thank you guys again for taking the time to check this out. We appreciate each and everyone of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined, BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron only programing, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH!   Become a patron now https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents? Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, (specially YouTube!)   THANKS Y'ALL   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9WtLyoP9QU8sxuIfxk3eg Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast www.twitch.tv/leftflankvets​ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thisisrevolutionpodcast/ Twitter: @TIRShowOakland Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland   Read Jason Myles in Sublation Magazine https://www.sublationmag.com/writers/jason-myles   Read Jason Myles in Damage Magazine https://damagemag.com/2023/11/07/the-man-who-sold-the-world/   Pascal Robert's Black Agenda Report: https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Pascal%20Robert

Why are things so rough in Hollywood right now? John and Craig look at the industry's current contraction, its historical analogues, and offer suggestions for what might fix it. We also follow up on streaming ad breaks and New York accents, before answering listener questions on being paralyzed, whether it's by your second draft or writing professional emails. In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig wonder what to do with their digital lives once they've shuffled off this mortal coil, and how do you keep it from getting creepy? Links: The Life and Death of Hollywood by Daniel Bessner for Harpers One weird trick for fixing Hollywood by Max Read Moloch Trap Lola Dupre Codenames Duet 2 Kings 2:23-24 Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription! Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter John on Mastodon Outro by Ben Singer (send us yours!) Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Email us at ask@johnaugust.com You can download the episode here.

The Writers Guild of America strike was settled – so why is selling screenplays in Hollywood harder than ever? Daniel Bessner is a contributor to Harper's Magazine and an associate professor at the University of Washington's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how investors are changing the business landscape for television and movie writers – and the ways writers hustle for any work. His article is “The Life and Death of Hollywood.”  

Nearly a year after the Hollywood writers' strike started, the entertainment industry remains in flux. Harpers journalist Daniel Bessner says TV and film writers are feeling the brunt of the changes.Maureen Corrigan reviews a collection of Emily Dickinson letters. For sponsor-free episodes of Fresh Air — and exclusive weekly bonus episodes, too — subscribe to Fresh Air+ via Apple Podcasts or at here. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A brief message from Bob ... Derek and Danny stumble into Bob's Zoom room ... Israel's doubly out-of-control week ... How Biden's Gaza failures will shape the Democratic Party ... Biden's political incentives on Israel-Palestine ... Heading to Overtime ...