The End of the World with Michael and Stu
The Apocalypse is Everywhere. The End of the World with Michael and Stu is a (hopefully) insightful and (hopefully) humorous exploration of the rise of apocalyptic news, apocalyptic thinking and apocalyptic culture. Each week, we’ll be looking at a work of art, a piece of media, or an historical event related to the (hopefully not) impending End of the World.
Episodes
139 episodes
139: They are Messing with my Heart
This week we are discussing Anton Jäger's new smash hit, Hyperpolitics, which looks to diagnose the ills of our contemporary political era from a leftist perspective. We go over Jäger's use of periodization, consider his analyses of co...
138: I Reached Out for the One I Tried to Destroy
This week we are talking about the recent hype surrounding an AI that might, by 2030, "kill us all." This is somewhat familiar territory for the pod, but it is once again relevant after "whistleblower" Jacob Coxon's emergence with his dire prog...
137: I Can't Seem to Face Up to the Facts
This week we are discussing Mary Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho in light of Stu's recent article on the film's resonance with a cybernetic conception of the environment. We discuss whether the crim...
136: Blinded by the Light
This week we are discussing José Saramago's 1995 novel Blindness. We consider what the central theme of the novel, a world in which virtually everyone suddenly goes blind, says about the way society is set up and how quickly it might d...
135: Over the Hill or Underland
This week we're finally talking about The Matrix, which is arguably the most culturally influential film of the last 30 years. We discuss the various ways the "red pill/blue pill" moment has been ingested by the culture, and we also ge...
134: A Palazzo of Some Fantastic Proportion
This week we are delving into Stu's new article on Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity. What are some of the consequences of the potential merger of our brains with superintelligent AI? Are they good? Are there any downsides? What about immortalit...
133: Now I Can't See, I Just Stare
This week we are covering the 1993 film, Alive, directed by Frank Marshall and starring Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton. A sort of apocalypse in miniature, the movie depicts the miraculous survival of sixteen members of a Uruguayan rugby...
132: Sleep with One Eye Open
This week we are tackling The Odyssey, both the ancient Greek epic and the recent adaptation directed by Christopher Nolan. We go over the context of the poem's composition and dissemination, its significance to the Greeks, and gi...
131: The End of Laughter and Soft Lies
This week we have a two pronged episode. We open up discussing the suit four states have brought against Meta, alleging the company has knowingly caused irreparable damage to millions of teens in promoting its harmful and addictive products to ...
130: When You Wish Upon a Star
We're going back to where it all began; that's right, it's aliens, this time those friendly aliens from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We talk about the general optimism and lack of paranoia in the film, contras...
129: With the Tolling Tolling Bells' Perpetual Clang
In honor of America's 250th birthday we are covering one of the landmark events in the nation's history, namely the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We discuss why the assassination was so significant, the context of the recently concluded Civ...
128: Everybody Won't Be Treated All the Same
This week we are using a novel format to explore recent Supreme Court decisions. Stu presents Michael with a brief sketch of the case, Michael decides how he would rule, and Stu then reveals the actual decision arrived at by the justices. Topic...
127: Nothing Gold Can Stay
This week we are discussing the recent New York congressional primaries which have announced Zohran Mamdani's arrival as a new political "kingmaker" in the Democratic Party. We discuss the three candidates, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Daria...
126: We're on the Highway to Hell
This week we are talking about the so-called utopian promise of the internet, the "information superhighway" as it was once known, and how it has, over the last thirty years, transformed into an information superhighway...to HELL. W...
125: The Sky was the Limit
This week we are discussing the Challenger space shuttle disaster, looking at what caused the shuttle to explode and how the aftermath specifically affected the psyche of the United States in the late 1980s. We also share personal recollections...
124: Radioactivity is in the Air for You And Me
This week we're discussing the April 28, 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union and its aftermath. We use the 2019 HBO mini-series Chernobyl as our guide, despite some of its historical inaccur...
123: Hammer of the Gods
We're back covering a film that is directly in our wheelhouse this week, namely 2020's ridiculous apocalypse movie, Greenland, a Gerard Butler vehicle that explores what it's like to negotiate the aftermath of infidelity as the wo...
122: Oval Encyclicals in Canyons Heaping the Impasse High with Choir
This week we are going over some recent news, including word of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the hypothetical "end" of the Iran War, the Pope's powerful statement warning against the hazards of AI for human dignity, an...
121: Let the Mystery Be
We're concluding our coverage of The Leftovers, going over the final season in detail. We debate the series' ending, entertain the hypotheticals offered within the show itself (Michael didn't have to think of one this week), and c...
120: I've Heard that I'm on the Road to Purgatory
After a 111 episode break, we're finally returning to one of our favorite shows about the end of the world, that's right, it's The Leftovers Season Two. To celebrate, we have recorded our longest ever episode. There are so ma...
119: All My Impurities and Evils yet Unknown
This week we are covering recent events in the news, including NBA playoff conspiracies, time travel conspiracies about the recent attempted shooting of President Trump, the "missing scientists" conspiracy (which maybe, just maybe, ties into th...
118: A Brief History of the Afterlife Eight
This week we travel to the Americas to consider the Aztec conception of the afterlife. Unlike many of the cultures we have covered, the Aztecs put a great weight on the manner of your death in determining the location of your eternal (or not so...
117: A Brief History of the Afterlife Seven
This week we are going to Ancient Greece and exploring their vision of the afterlife. We talk about the judges in hell, about Hades, about all of our favorite denizens of Hades, such as Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion, and we even relate the stor...
116: A Brief History of the Afterlife Six
Our occasional series, "A Brief History of the Afterlife," is BACK. This week we are covering the Zoroastrian vision of the afterlife, including the Chinvat Bridge, the four layers of heaven, the four layers of hell, Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu, ...
115: A Motion and a Spirit, that Impels All Thinking Things
It is finally here: the cybernetics episode! We go over the origins and basic concepts of the 20th century science of cybernetics, looking specifically at the work of Norbert Wiener and Gregory Bateson. We draw on Stu's 2025 article
