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.

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Has AI come to save the world, to destroy it or to destroy it in the guise of saving it?

Is AII, which supposedly enriches all our lives, a gigantic boon to humanity and/or a monstrous con where creators’ own work is fed back to them, a market bubble ready to burst as the last desperate gasp of Western capitalism and a devourer of water, electricity, oil and rare earth metals that threatens local communities and is part of a global grab of the world’s resources? On Culture & Barbarism 9 Dennis and Toby consider the range of these possibilities with special guest Joan-Pedro Caranana. We’ll look at this decidedly American phenomenon from our perspectives in Paris, Monterey and Madrid.

Trump who had once proclaimed the U.S. was in Syria for the oil, now claims to have returned Venezuela's oil to its rightful owners, the American oil companies

Like George Bush before him in Iraq, Donald Trump proclaimed that with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in chains, the U.S. has secured Venezuela’s oil. In this special episode of Culture & Barbarism Dennis Broe and Jack Shalom talk about why the European (and Chinese) response to Trump’s actions is rejoicing on the one hand and staying in the shadows on the other; what AI has to do with this new grab for oil; Trump’s attempt to ‘kill hope’ after the inaugural of Mamdani; and how a show trial can become a political trial exposing the blatant viciousness and hypocrisy of the empire.