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.

In this episode with Dennis Broe and Special Guest Lee Camp, we discuss the new concentration and consolidation of right-wing media as it moves to capture mainstream (or center-right) media with the new dominance of Larry Ellison's proxy ownership of Paramount +, Tik Tok and attempted takeover of Warners. Lee Camp, who hosted his own weekly comedy news show for 8 years Redacted Tonight (and now on Unredacted Tonight) shares his insights and experience on censorship, censorship by omission, being de-platformed as well as on the continuing Neo-Con strategy of both Republicans and Democrats (we now have Hilary Clinton as Gaza-Genocide Denier) to wage perpetual war in Venezuela, the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere. More barbarism than culture, but that is what we are left with at the moment in a deteriorating West.

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Of Alternative Radio, Trumpian "Affordability" and a new Robin Hood who taxes the poor and gives tax breaks to the rich.

This episode, also a plea for listener-sponsored radio, features Dennis Broe and WBAI’s Jack Shalom discussing the takeover of mainstream media by right-wing and Zionist owners, AI’s restarting of Three Mile Island, and why the alien extermination of the earth is looking better each week of both the Trump presidency and the European sycophants who genuflect to it.
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Dennis on Steven Knights' House of Guinness and its challenge to the genre of "wealth porn." Toby on some surprising trends in Higher Education that indicate that though under fire in the Trump era the field is still prosperous. Plus, fashion and Peaky Blinders, Liverpool as Dublin and Gambling and College Sports.

In this episode Toby and Dennis discuss the cuts in public television and radio; how they are dis-servicing local Indigenous Media and how Alternative Media is countering Public Media’s Washington Consensus.

Also on the agenda is a conversation about past cultural funding and in particular the Ford Foundation and the continual way the Pentagon finances and dictates film scripts and practices.

We then branch out and discuss media tax breaks and whether they deliver what they promise, Netflix in Spain, what streaming services mean by the global and the local, and Mission Impossible in Australia.

In this episode, Dennis Broe and Toby Miller look at the significance of the LA Protests against Trump’s “invasion” of California, the class and racial meaning of the burning of the Waymo cars, the U.S. Treasury assault on Mexican banks and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ “Mexican problem.” With independent journalist Jalyssa Dugrot and an up-close view of the demonstrations as both coasts, with the New York victory of Zohran Mamdani, erupt against the Republican coup.

In this episode Toby Miller and Dennis Broe discuss Trump's tariffs and their effect on the European and American audiovisual industry as well as the ways the American streamers continue to colonize European public television while seemingly, as Trump might say, "making nice," or appearing to cooperate.

Our guest is France 24 presenter Marjorie Paillon, a French analyst whose area is the interaction between American and European visual media and who raises the question of whether one of the goals of the Trump tariffs is to undercut European digital regulation.