The End of the World with Michael and Stu

This week we are revisiting a 2016 New Yorker profile of Sam Altman by Tad Friend for insight into how we got where we now are with regards to AI and its seeming inescapable ubiquity. The article is q...

9 Des 202556min

This week we are discussing the Heaven's Gate cult, which famously brought about its own end through mass suicide in March of 1997 as the Hale-Bopp Comet sailed past the Earth. We discuss the group's ...

2 Des 20251h 3min

This week we are considering Sidney Lumet's 1976 classic Network. Written by acclaimed screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and featuring an all-star cast, the film examines the breakdown of the supposed obje...

25 Nov 202559min

This week we are tackling Kathryn Bigelow's 2025 film A House of Dynamite which deals with one of our "favorite" nightmare scenarios, namely, a nuclear missile of unknown origin being fired at a major...

18 Nov 202550min

This week we are charting some of the reactions (and overreactions) to last week's mayoral election in New York City wherein Zohran Mamdani emerged triumphant. Can Mamdani's campaign point the way for...

11 Nov 202556min

This week we're getting into Abel Ferrara's 2011 film 4:44 Last Day on Earth which follows an actor, Cisco (Willem DaFoe), and his painter partner, Skye (Shanyn Leigh), on....the last day on earth. Wi...

4 Nov 202552min

This week for Halloween we are covering "The Shadow over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft. We get into Lovecraft's troubling history of racism, showing how it works as a manifestation of the anxieties of ...

28 Okt 20251h 1min

Is our genetic makeup our destiny, or is there someway we can overcome the code on which our bodies and minds are based? This is the question asked by this week's film, 1997's Gattaca, written and dir...

21 Okt 202556min