Culture and Barbarism

AI: If you build it they will come—and take your job

In Culture & Barbarism 12,  Media Scholar Toby Miller from Mexico and Media Critic Dennis Broe from Paris look at the AI phenomenon, from a potentially bursting bubble to "To big to Fail." Market valuation is skyrocketing even as the service continues a massive drive toward job loss—with Amazon's "Fulfillment Centers now being converted into Unemployment Centers—a more total integration into the U.S. war machine and a gigantic and destructive use of resources. Meanwhile, AI in China is being developed in a different way, as the service is integrated into the industrial sector, a rotting core in the West, and used to better people's lives rather than as a new source of profit for the few.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2457407/support]

TV and the TV Industry: Mergers, AI and Youtube/Little to Like, Lots to Loathe

On Culture and Barbarism 11, Media Analyst Dennis Broe is joined by Hollywood Reporter Chief TV Critic Daniel Feinberg to discuss changes in the TV Series industry involving Mergers, Ai and YouTube. We cover not only the threat each poses to creativity in the industry but also how each of these are influencing the form and content of television series. The threats include: mass layoffs; writers increasingly being paid less on the long march from broadcast and cable TV to Netflix to YouTube, where for the most part they are not paid at all; "creeping AI"; and YouTube and Netflix amalgamating content and erasing distinctions as well as AI and YouTube absorbing advertising dollars that used to go to broadcast TV and the streamers. All of this in not only an industry but also a political climate where regulations are going out the window.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2457407/support]

Shakespeare's Language As Social Barometer

In this special edition of Culture & Barbarism, titled "Shakespeare's Language As Social Barometer," culture critic Dennis Broe talks about Shakespeare's contribution to the language, his critique of power and incorporation of ordinary language, the imperial use of his work as colonial soft power and its contestation and, finally, how one phrase "Unsex Me Here" by Lady Macbeth echoes across not just generations but centuries.  This talk was a keynote given in India on the occasion of Shakespeare's birthday for a conference titled "Shakespeare as Architect of the English Language." He is joined here by Shakespeare aficionado and musical comedy lyricist Ed Levy.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2457407/support]

Iran, Cuba, Vegas and the latest Harry Palmer: Pornocopia

In this interview with Pacifica Radio and WBAI's Jack Shalom, Dennis Broe takes us into the world of Pornocopia in the latest Harry Palmer LA Mystery Thriller. We talk about how that world intersects with Iran in a blowback onto Harry's case, the way the porn and gambling industries have now seeped into every aspect of American life and about the false intimacy porn promises and the false profits gambling serves up as everywhere ordinary people in the country grow more desperate.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2457407/support]

Pornocopia: Sex, Gambling and the American Psyche

In Culture and Barbarism 10 Dennis Broe and Toby Miller discuss Broe's new Harry Palmer novel Pornocopia while Toby recounts the atmosphere in Mexico in the wake of the American-gun-fueled narco attacks. We recount the many similarities between the above ground Hollywood industry and the now more popular porn industry and we look at the beginnings of Vegas, fueled by mob drug money, the Hoover Dam and Air Conditioning. Finally, we look at why Ian Fleming and Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to abandon their characters and why flawed characters are more fun to write.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2457407/support]