Discontents Derek Davison

Hello Discontents subscribers and podcast aficionados! Derek Davison here, publisher of the Foreign Exchanges newsletter and podcast. I’m very pleased to bring you the long-awaited (?) second ever Discontents podcast! It’s been six months since our first outing, so we figure the world is probably ready for another one. I’m joined this time out by fellow Substackers Kelsey Atherton of Wars of Future Past, Felipe de la Hoz of BORDER/LINES, Rob Rousseau of The Insurgents podcast, and Patrick Wyman of Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future.
Apart from bringing you more Discontents content and to fill what we feel is a critical gap in the number of podcasts out there, we’ve gathered for one main reason: to encourage as many people as possible to pre-order Patrick’s upcoming book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World, which offers a new explanation for the ascendance of Europe that starts at the turn of the 16th century.
We’ll spend most of our time asking Patrick about the book before a segue (not my best segue ever, if I’m being honest) to a discussion of the Biden administration’s approach to immigration thus far and some thoughts from Kelsey on whether we’re really being visited by craft from outer space. Enjoy!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit discontents.substack.com

Noticing a conspicuous dearth of them in the market, we here at Discontents have decided to start a podcast. The idea is to have a rotating cast of the fifteen of us take turns once a month to discuss what’s happening in the news, or to highlight any projects one of us might have coming up. To kick things off today we’ve got a discussion about my new book Lockdown in Hell World, out early 2021 from OR Books. (This is Luke btw). It’s the follow up to my book from last year Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia, which happens to be on sale right now alongside other OR books from Slavoj Žižek, Eli Valley, Nathan J Robinson, Mike Davis, Norman Finkelstein and others.
Joining me to talk Hell World, moving to the suburbs, the aftermath of the election, relations with Iran, the way the media covers the police and military, and the ongoing debate about Covid are Rob Rousseau of The Insurgents, Derek Davison of Foreign Exchanges and Patrick Wyman of Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future.
For more from those three and other Discontents contributors Felipe De La Hoz (BORDER/LINES), Kim Kelly (Be the Spark), Shane Ferro (Cruel and Unusual), Eoin Higgins (The Flashpoint), Connor Wroe Southard (A Lonely Impulse of Delight) and others on the funniest, saddest, and more despicable moments of the Trump administration check out this recent edition of Welcome to Hell World.
“Living through four years of Trump as president while being way too online was like having one's brain marinated in a really disgusting stew of outrage and hopelessness, just chunks of the shit floating in a greasy, congealing mass of despair,” Wyman writes. “What made it all worse was the knowledge that no matter how stupid today was, tomorrow would inevitably bring something dumber.”
Thanks to Aaron Perrino for the music for the podcast. Find more of his work here.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit discontents.substack.com