Best The End of the World with Michael and Stu Podcasts (2025)

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84: A Brief History of the Afterlife Five The Vedic Religion 48:06

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3d ago48:06

48:06

In the final installment (for now) of our afterlife miniseries, we are considering the ancient Vedic Religion, the ancestor of modern Hinduism which arose in northwestern India in the second millennium BCE. We talk about the idea of being reincarnated in other realms (as opposed to in this world), and the different factors that might alter the real…

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83: A Brief History of the Afterlife Four Ancient Egypt 50:00

10d ago50:00

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Moving in a parallel direction to our last topic, we are going over the afterlife beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians this week, touching on mummification, the pyramid texts, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the elusive Field of Reeds. We compare the classes afterlife of the Mesopotamians to the highly stratified beliefs of the Egyptians, while also…

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82: A Brief History of the Afterlife Three 49:15

17d ago49:15

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It's part three of our foray into the history of the afterlife, this time with a focus on Ancient Mesopotamia and the legendary Epic of Gilgamesh. We go over the conception of the afterlife presented in the poem, which is very egalitarian if not very comforting, and we then move on to consider the second half of the tale, which focuses on Gilgamesh…

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81: A Brief History of the Afterlife Two 51:59

24d ago51:59

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In the second installment of our afterlife miniseries we delve into the prehistoric realms, discussing the earliest evidence we have for some kind of a belief in the afterlife in prehistoric, neolithic peoples. We also consider the Neanderthal and Denisovans, cave paintings, early totemic art, and the practices of ceremonial burial. We also touch o…

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80: A Brief History of the Afterlife One 53:24

1M ago53:24

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This week we are deviating from our normal subject matter slightly in covering Albert Brooks's wonderful 1991 film Defending Your Life as a way of introducing the miniseries we'll be running for the next month. The afterlife seems like a natural corollary to the show's typical focus on the end of the world, and Brooks's film felt like a good way in…

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79: I Still Dream of Orgonon 47:56

1M ago47:56

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This week we are discussing right-wing paranoia about weather control and how it is being used as a comforting belief that enables one to evade accepting the reality of human influenced climate change. We go through the history of the "chemtrails" conspiracy theory, while also situating it in the earlier (and much more interesting) beliefs of Vienn…

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78: Islands in the Stream 52:40

2M ago52:40

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This week we are discussing the recent furor over the Jeffrey Epstein case which has begun to surface divisions within the MAGA movement. We go over the actual history of the prosecutions of Epstein and Maxwell, look at the various ways Trump supporters have justified the administration's refusal to "release the files," while also speculating about…

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77: How Many Ways To Get What You Want? 56:47

2M ago56:47

56:47

This week we are discussing the Biblical Antichrist. What does the New Testament have to say about this ominous figure? Why do some Christians maintain his return is a necessary precondition for the so-called "second coming" of Jesus Christ? What historical (or contemporary) figures have people asserted might just be this Antichrist? Is the Antichr…

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76: I Won't Forget to Put Roses on Your Grave 44:51

2M ago44:51

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This week we are discussing Edgar Wright's zombie comedy about the mundanity of day to day life under late capitalism, Shaun of the Dead. Featuring star turns for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the movie examines the question of how to live a meaningful life through the familiar tropes of a zombie picture. We consider the ways the issues at play in thi…

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75: The Days Are Long And the Nights Will Throw You Away 47:20

2M ago47:20

47:20

For our 75th episode spectacular, we are discussing 28 Days Later, the 2002 film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland that reinvigorated the zombie movie for the 2000s and launched a franchise that has been back in the news lately. We go over the film's links to Stu's favorite topic, Romanticism, while also comparing it favorably to …

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74: Mickey Mouse Has Grown Up A Cow 53:59

2M ago53:59

53:59

This week we are talking about billionaires and what makes them different than the rest of us. Why do they put so much stock into utopian fantasies of human salvation on Mars? Who do they believe Artificial General Intelligence will solve all of Earth's problems if we just allow for it to be born (with as few regulations in place as possible)? Why …

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73: They're Programmed To Destroy Us 55:03

3M ago55:03

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This week we are discussing the introductory miniseries of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica as a kind of "culmination" of our recent robot/AI-themed episodes. For once we both really like the show, and we dissect how it deals with the complex issues of technology and religion as well as the question of "fatherhood" with respect to both characters …

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72: But Are "Friends" Electric? 56:30

3M ago56:30

56:30

This week we are continuing our suite of robot themed episodes by discussing the play that originated the word, R.U.R. by Karel Čapek which was first written in 1920. Derived from a Czech term meaning "serf" or "worker," these robots are more akin to the androids and other humanoid robots to be found in works like Blade Runner or Companion than the…

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71: We Are Programmed Just to Do Anything You Want Us To 57:44

3M ago57:44

57:44

This week we are talking about robots. Where did they come from? What are they? Are they really going to replace all human workers? We get into the history of these machines, while looking at the implications for them, should they be paired with AI. We also discuss Elon Musk's fixation on humanoid robots, and where this obsession derives from. We a…

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70: Bring Me A Dream 1:01:08

3M ago1:01:08

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This week we are discussing E.T.A. Hoffman's short story, The Sandman, which presciently anticipates some potential psychological consequences of a too-deep dependence on artificial beings for companionship, while also pointing towards the fundamentally destabilizing possibilities a world filled with autonomous, robotic beings might bring. We go ov…

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69: In This Everlasting Twilight 52:58

4M ago52:58

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This week we are talking about the growth of emotional dependency on AI as programs like ChatGPT become more ubiquitous and more sophisticated. We recognize that this has the potential to be, in a sense, a double apocalypse, as the rise of AI threatens to make human beings completely redundant while at the same time the resources used to power AI m…

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68: Round and Round and Round We Spin 44:17

4M ago44:17

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This week we are discussing Rian Johnson's 2012 film Looper, a time travel movie that (perhaps accurately) predicts a bleak future where class stratification and rampant criminality have flourished unchecked. Time travel has been invented and its primary use seems to be the elimination of hit men who are sent back in time to be murdered by their yo…

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67: You Can Never Break the Chain 46:31

4M ago46:31

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This week we are talking about global supply chains and how they might be stretched, perhaps to the breaking point, if the Trump tariffs are allowed to take effect. We revisit the moment when many of us were first introduced to the idea of a supply chain, the early days of Covid-19, and look at how the current potential supply chain disaster differ…

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66: I Cursed the Gloom that Set Upon Us 47:32

4M ago47:32

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This week we are discussing Ridley Scott's 1982 classic sci-fi noir Blade Runner. While we praise the visual depiction of a post-nuclear-war American city, we both found the plot somewhat difficult to hook into, so to speak. While the essential examination of the question of humanity, and what it would mean for an android to achieve a fully realize…

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65: Across the Great Divide 54:40

5M ago54:40

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This week we are discussing psychics, specifically psychic medium John Edward of Crossing Over with John Edward. This program which ran from 2001 to 2004 purported to connect living people to their dead relatives by means of Edward's psychic mediumship. We go over a brief history of psychics from ancient times to the present before digging into Edw…

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64: A Cyclops Walks Across the Sky 1:07:10

5M ago1:07:10

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This week we are discussing two recent albums by mainstays of 2000s era indie rock that deal directly and obliquely with climate change, namely Mount Eerie's 2024 release Night Palace and Dirty Projectors/David Longstreth/s t a r g a z e's 2025 record Song of the Earth. We talk a bit about the history of both artists and why it might be that they a…

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63: Take My Advice You'd Be Better Off Dead 55:07

5M ago55:07

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This week we are looking at Train to Busan, a 2016 film directed by Yeon Sang-ho. It's a zombie apocalypse movie set on a train moving from the South Korean capital of Seoul to the southern city of Busan. We get into the film's historical overtones, as well as the family drama that plays out amid this unfolding horror show. We open the episode with…

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62: A Dry Voice Comes from a Stingy Heart 58:19

5M ago58:19

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This week we're are discussing Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's recent book Abundance. This text offers a new vision of the future for the Democratic Party to center as it attempts to claw back power, ignoring for the most part the larger societal issues of wealth inequality in favor of focusing on regulatory changes that could be made to spearhead …

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61: One Step from the Great Beyond 1:05:34

5M ago1:05:34

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We're talking about the rise and fall of Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic this week, following up on our previous episode. We've got anecdotes about Caesar weeping before statues, his run in with pirates, his war against Vercingetorix in Gaul; all your favorite Caesar stories are here! Plus we also muse a bit on Caesar's death; why d…

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60: We're Together Dead and Lonely 1:02:18

6M ago1:02:18

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This week we're discussing the run up to the final collapse of the Roman Republic, charting such characters as Scipio Aemelianus, the Gracchi Brothers, Gaius Marius, and Sulla and attempting to map them and their historical circumstances onto some of the events of recent American history. While the analogies are imperfect, there are enough similari…

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59: A Man of Wealth and Taste 1:10:03

6M ago1:10:03

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This week we are diving into the weird world of Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., the newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services in the second Trump administration. We go over his history of environmental activism and chart how this morphed into a profoundly conspiracist worldview that, with him now in control of the levers of power in the A…

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58: Where Strangers are as Family and Loneliness Can't Hide 59:56

6M ago59:56

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This week we are discussing Todd Haynes's film Safe (1995). We get into how the movie explores the creeping sense of meaning being sapped out of suburban life in the late 1980s, focusing on the ways this parallels dilemmas that are manifesting in our contemporary moment. We also go over the film's consideration of "environmental illness" and how th…

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57: A Stronger Loving World to Die In 58:46

6M ago58:46

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This week we are tackling one of Stu's all-time favorite comics, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen. We go through the main characters and discuss the apocalyptic ramifications of this extremely well-wrought tale of a society on the edge of destruction. We also tease out the implications of costumed vigilantism suggested by Moore's text, consid…

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56: As Parasites Might in your Blood 53:57

7M ago53:57

53:57

This week we are discussing all things CANADA! Specifically, why does President Trump claim it is a "great contender" to become the 51st state? What is it about the US's northern neighbor that is so attractive to the would-be empire builder president? How is this issue playing out in Canada itself? Would a military conquest of Canada result in a br…

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55: The Ocean at your Door 56:25

7M ago56:25

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This week we are joined by comedian, actress and writer Maggie Crane to discuss Bo Burnham's divisive comedy special Inside from 2021. We get into some of the critiques of the special, while also noting the things about it which we really like. Is Inside "our King Lear" or are we still waiting for the definitive covid-era great work to emerge? If y…

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54: The Birds of Leaving Call to Us 1:03:04

7M ago1:03:04

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This week we're talking about the first season of the hit Apple TV+ show Severance. We examine the ways the show functions as a reflection of our current, corporation-dominated world, exploring questions of work/life balance as well as the potential abuses inherent in a severance-like procedure. We also ask the all important question: what if sever…

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53: If I Could Turn Back Time 47:34

7M ago47:34

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This week we are devoting a full episode to news, recapping the first week of Donald Trump's second term as president. We discuss the myriad executive orders the president has issued, ranging from his pardons, to his crackdown at the border, to his taking the United States out of the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. What a…

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52: A Duel of Personalities 49:29

8M ago49:29

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This week we are discussing Coralie Fargeat's 2024 film The Substance, a movie that imagines what it might be like if you could recapture your youth. We get into the implications of the film for our culture, particularly as it relates to aging and finding meaning in an increasingly youth-centric, substance-less world. Making references to Oscar Wil…

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51: Tryin' to Run from the Destruction 49:33

8M ago49:33

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This week we are discussing the "Y2K computer bug," the great potential apocalypse of the turn of the millennium that...did not live up to the hype. But rather than being another "when prophecy fails" situation, the reason this apocalypse was averted was because of concerted and organized work across many different areas. Programmers worked for yea…

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Episode 50: Strewn with Time's Dead Flowers 52:49

8M ago52:49

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This week we're discussing Robert Eggers' 2024 adaptation of FW Murnau's classic Nosferatu. Is it a poignant and disturbing meditation on the idea of forbidden love, recasting a classic story for our troubled times, or is it merely an empty reboot of well-loved IP for our empty and soulless era? The hosts are somewhat divided on the answer to this …

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Episode 49: A World in White Gets Underway 49:26

8M ago49:26

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It's our 2024 recap episode in which we go over all things apocalypse from the year we are concluding. Topics discussed include: the return of Trump, the continued disintegration of the Democratic party, the rise of a new oligarchy, the continued impotence of the media in the face of horrors at home and abroad, and the potential for AI to immiserat…

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Episode 48: Five Golden Rings 49:44

9M ago49:44

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It's Christmastime and in celebration we are covering a brilliant Christmas movie, namely The 12 Disasters of Christmas. This film is...a disaster. A Christian allegory mixed with a Mayan Apocalypse 2012 tale that is somehow also based on the popular Christmas carol, The 12 Days of Christmas...it is...very, very bad. But our conversation about it? …

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Episode 47: There's a Madman Living in Waco 1:04:37

9M ago1:04:37

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This week we're covering the siege of the Branch Davidian compound by federal authorities in 1993, paying particular attention to the group's leader, the enigmatical rock musician turned would-be messiah, David Koresh. We go through the history of the Branch Davidians, tracing their roots back to the "Great Disappointment" of William Miller and the…

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Episode 46: Shadow on the Things You Know 54:56

9M ago54:56

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This week we are discussing avian flu and the possibility that it might be the next pandemic ahead of us, just over the horizon. We get into the history of influenza outbreaks originating in domesticated animals, such as, most famously, the so-called "Spanish flu" of 1918 in order to calibrate how potentially worrying such an outbreak could be shou…

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Episode 45: It's a Godawful Small Affair 53:53

9M ago53:53

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This week we are covering the 2005 Spielberg/Cruise film War of the Worlds. Made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the film attempts to make some kind of connection between the H.G. Wells's classic story of alien invasion and the events that had so recently shaken the foundations of America...and it fails to do so, at least in a manner …

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Episode 44: Turn and Face the Strain 49:01

9M ago49:01

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This week we are covering the COP29 climate conference which took place over the last two weeks in Baku, Azerbaijan. Have they solved the issue? Was this climate conference in actuality a "meet up" for lobbyists in the fossil fuel industry? What is the connection between climate change and social justice, and is this connection one of the reasons t…

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Episode 43: Our Shadows Taller Than Our Souls 53:10

10M ago53:10

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This week we are discussing Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road. A bleak but simultaneously uplifting depiction of a journey through a world in which nature has been totally destroyed, the story offers glimmers of hope in spite of its incredibly grim setting. Themes of childhood, memory, dreaming, and perseverance even in the face of seemingly in…

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Episode 42: Project for a New American Violence 46:25

10M ago46:25

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This week we are talking about 2013's The Purge, a low budget high concept home invasion thriller directed by James DeMonaco. We discuss the Aristotelian overtones of the notion that an annual night of violence might allow for a cathartic experience that would help society to be more peaceful the rest of the time, while also exploring a few histori…

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Episode 41: The End of America with Michael and Stu 47:59

10M ago47:59

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It's our election recap episode where we take accountability for our...mistaken belief that Harris would pull out a tight election, when, obviously...that did not happen. We discuss what went wrong for the Harris campaign, while analyzing what this outcome might bode for elections moving forward. Are we destined to just sink deeper and deeper into …

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Episode 40: There is No Turning Back 47:00

10M ago47:00

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It's our election day special where we go out on a limb and predict who we think will triumph in the 2024 US presidential election. Is the seeming late swing to Harris real, and if it is real, will it be enough? Has Kill Tony doomed the Trump campaign with his offensive "comedy"? Has Ann Selzer, with whom we were all VERY familiar before this past …

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Episode 39: Hurry Up Please It's Time 49:07

10M ago49:07

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We're back on our election beat, in this episode gaming out potential outcomes of the November 5th US presidential elections. What would happen if Trump wins the popular vote but loses the electoral college? What if Harris wins in a landslide? What if the electoral college comes out in a tie? We go through all of these scenarios and also look at so…

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Episode 38: They've All Come to Look for America 47:12

11M ago47:12

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This week we are diving back into politics, looking at the platforms of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, paying particular attention to where each candidate stands on apocalypse-adjacent issues like climate change and military weaponry. The results of our investigation may surprise you! This episode is the first in a series we'll be doing as th…

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Episode 37: Hail Atlantis! Part Two 51:02

11M ago51:02

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In the second and final episode of our series on Atlantis we get into the modern vision of the mythical lost land, touching on such singular figures as Ignatius Donnelly, Madame Blavatsky, and Edgar Cayce. What was it about this ancient story from a minor Platonic dialogue that was so appealing to psychics, cranks, and charlatans of every variety, …

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Episode 36: Hail Atlantis! Part One 47:43

11M ago47:43

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At long last we are covering one of the greatest apocalyptic narratives of them all! That's right, it's the Atlantis episode! And for a subject so massive, so important, we had to make it a two parter. In this first episode we will cover Plato's vision of Atlantis as presented in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias. We also give a bit of background o…

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Episode 35: Monkey See Monkey Doom 55:04

11M ago55:04

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This week we are covering the 1995 Wolfgang Petersen blockbuster Outbreak. Having lived through a pandemic of our own, can we glean new wisdom by revisiting this terrifying tale of an even-deadlier-than-Ebola virus set loose on a small Northern California town? Perhaps not, but it is still fun to examine the politics of this essentially liberal pos…

The End Of The World With Michael And Stu Podcasts