soundcloud.comPosted Nov 13, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC
I wish there was some kind of indication, other than word of mouth, that Chapo Trap House is a socialist podcast. It wasn't until recently that I got turned onto it because thought it was just some wacky morning zoo type comedy podcast.
Matt tells me that he considers Karl Marx’s essay “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” and the first volume of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy to be essential reading. “Brumaire analyzes dynamics within capital in a really sophisticated and subtle way,” he says. Marxism, he tells me, is “thought of as doctrinaire. And a lot of people want it to be that way. Knowing XYZ to every power of every doctrinaire point is much less important than having a heuristic for analyzing things. Shit like superstructure and base.”
In Marxist theory, base is the political economic structure on which everything rests. It is, essentially, the distribution of power and resources, of money and land, and, most importantly, the system by which goods and services are produced for money. Superstructure is the culture that exists on top of it — art, music, politics, philosophy, media, science, religion.
“Every time there’s a fucking Beyoncé argument that consumes the culture, just knowing what base and superstructure is simplifies things so much in terms of understanding what’s going on and not getting caught up in an argument about how revolutionary Lemonade is or whatever,” he says.
https://psmag.com/the-radical-cheek-of-chapo-trap-house-c95c3b5eabe7#.s68c7bd8o
God, it was so satisfying to hear them shit with abandon on Clinton.
She better leave the fucking country. Her legacy is letting fascism take over.
I love Chapo. Their podcast has been keeping me sane ever since the primaries.
i just started listening. Any old episodes worth going back to?
Politically: Ep 52 has Scahill, it's pretty good
Ep 48 has a human rights lawyer talking about the weaponization of human rights law.
Ep 38 has a reporter talking about Nike's global supply chain and the way it manipulates feminist rhetoric to suppress labor.
Ep 20 has a mexican activist talking about labor unrest in Mexico.
All of them. I'm not kidding.
Episode 46 with James Adomian was pretty funny. They have a Patreon too, $5 a month and you get an extra premium episode a week that's just as good as the regular eps.
Might as well plug the sub too: r/chapotraphouse
The premium episodes are pretty awesome. They also put up an episode where they 'debated' Matthew Walthers -- it was insane, so you should definitely check it out.
We Need To Talk About Kevin was a great one. The Reign Over Me one isn't that political but is very funny.
The episode with Matt Karp is really good
Really great show. So happy to find people with my sense of humor and my politics
Agreed. It's a tad embarrassing to admit but Chapo got me out of a really ugly, lonely place. I've recommended it to some liberal friends and I think it's a fairly good tool for pulling them leftwards too.
No, I feel you. I have bad anxiety and I actually will listen to Chapo when I feel it coming on. Since it engages me intellectually and makes me laugh it takes my mind off of everything pretty easily