This week I talk about who owns the media and why that matters. I get into the consolidation of media outlets from local owners a century ago to mostly multinational super-rich corporations today, and I unpack some of the ways that change has shaped the media we consume, which in turn shapes us. I talk about the Fairness Doctrine, the war on drugs, free speech, Buster Brown shoes, monopolies and why they are generally discourages in the US, Reagan, neoliberalist policy and lots more.

You can find a visual version of this episode with graphics on YouTube.

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This week I kick off a new section of the show by talking about the cycle of democracy, which philosopher Polybius outlined more than 2000 years ago. I cover aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, anarchy, monarchy and tyranny, explaining the seemingly-unavoidable cycle that links them all together into a loop...one we appear to be nearing the end/beginning of.

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This week I dive into some of the work Freud wrote later in his life, particularly a book called Civilization and its Discontents published in 1930. Freud believed that the evolutionary process we can use to trace the changes humans have gone through over the centuries can also explain why culture itself has evolved as it has. He basically thinks we are all self-deceiving, chronically unfulfilled and unsatisfied bots programmed to lie to ourselves above all else, and to avoid feeling guilt or shame based on unavoidable urges we all have by lying to ourselves and everyone else about those urges existing. Instead we redirect them. Killing someone in revenge becomes laser tag this weekend. Driving 100mph like an asshole to work everyday becomes gokarts and beers on Friday night. Cheating with the neighbor becomes an Only Fans subscription or a weekend at a swinger's convention.

In this episode I cover morality, guilt, shame, intoxication, sublimation, civilization, and Freud's views on why all of these things exist in the human species.

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