Shows
What Rough BeastWhy Smart People Keep Falling for Powerful Idiots🎉🎉🎉🎉 BLACK FRIDAY SALE. We’re doing it. This episode is free AF! And we hope to convince you to become a subscriber for just $1.50 PER MONTH. 🎉🎉🎉🎉This week we talk to Cy Canterel (again!), about her recent video essay “Epstein, Elite Power Networks, and The Utility of Disgrace.” Cy is a New Orleans-based “feral scholar,” a media theorist/technologist decoding systems of power and meaning. We discussed:* World Systems Theory as a map for understanding elite power: How Immanuel Wallerstein’s framework reveals the parallel reality inhabited by the ultra-wealthy—a class that exists “state-free” by choice, moving agnostically between sys...
2025-11-261h 04
What Rough BeastThe Edgelord ApocalypseThis week we talk to Cy Canterel, a scholar of media theory and systems theory in New Orleans and author of the Substack “Abstract Machines.” We discuss:* The chilling subcultures breeding the next wave of violence. Why 4chan, Discord, and “black pill” nihilism are more dangerous than traditional political extremism.* The Kirk assassination wasn’t about ideology. It was about spectacle. Tyler Robinson may have chosen Kirk not for his politics, but because killing him would be the ultimate “high score” in a gamified reality where violence is derealised.* The invisible powder keg: armed, queer...
2025-10-0257 min