Wetwired

Sean & Jules
  • 4.7 (13)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Culture, control, and empire

  1. Episode 88: Hyper Exploiting Paradise

    12/26/2025

    Episode 88: Hyper Exploiting Paradise

    We're with Anthony Banua-Simon, director of the documentary Cane Fire, to talk about the colonization and exploitation of the Hawai'ian people first by corporations, then by the US military, followed by Hollywood, and finally by tourism. Few places hold as large a place in the American imagination as Hawaiʻi. For many people, Hawai'i represents paradise. It is the exotic. But maybe above all the other ideas about Hawaiʻi, it’s at the center of so many fantasies of escape.  In order to sustain any fantasy, we have to perfect it in our minds and turn it into a curated object. Part of doing that is learning to ignore any complications or contradictions that could break the spell. In the case of Hawai'i, those complications are the people—those pesky people, always getting in the way when capitalism is trying to have a good time. Watch Cane Fire: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/cane-fire/umc.cmc.77a7aja56b4olltstnkm3ts21  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zI6-HX8P9k  https://means.tv/programs/cane-fire  https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/cane-fire?frontend=kui Learn about Anthony's other projects: https://anthonysimon.net/ https://anthonysimon.net/The-Experiment-Station We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts are better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    1h 12m
  2. Premium Episode 65: They Fought the Law (Sample)

    12/13/2025

    Premium Episode 65: They Fought the Law (Sample)

    We hope everyone is having a good holiday season and you’re all getting ready for the solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, the date of the Buddha’s enlightenment (some time last week), or whatever dates you mark. This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up to listen to the entire episode. patreon.com/wetwired We’ve been slowing down for the holiday season ourselves but we’ve also been working on a miniseries that we’ll release sometime in the next month or so. We’re not going to talk about it much. I can hint that it’s centered on the ground shift in longstanding Republican institutions as all the old timers figure out how to deal with all the youths raised by Discord and Pepe memes. But we’re taking a break from that today to talk about something else we’ve been enjoying for the past year, the coverage of the convicted Jan 6 rioters who got pardoned by Trump and then almost immediately committed new crimes.

    9 min
  3. Premium Episode 36: Trust No One feat Bradley Plaisier and Robert Skvarla (Unlocked)

    11/07/2025

    Premium Episode 36: Trust No One feat Bradley Plaisier and Robert Skvarla (Unlocked)

    We're teaming up with Bradley Plaisier and Robert Skvarla to talk about the show that 30 years ago introduced the normies to alien abductions, secret government programs, and global conspiracies. Somehow, the X-Files was exactly the right show for its time. It harnessed the untapped cynicism and suspicion of the 1990s and assured us that there really might be answers out there if you know where to look and who not to trust. This is an unlocked premium episode. Get extra episodes every month, and get access to all of our past subscriber only episodes for $5 a month. patreon.com/wetwired More from Bradley: https://x.com/bpleasies https://bwp.threadless.com More from Robert: https://x.com/RobertSkvarla The Endangered Alphabets Projecthttps://www.endangeredalphabets.net/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1529408245 We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts seem better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ This is an unlocked premium episode. Get extra episodes every month, and get access to all of our past subscriber only episodes for $5 a month. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC BY 4.0)

    1h 60m
  4. Premium Episode 20: Growing Up in the Children of God Cult feat Daniella Mestyanek Young (Unlocked)

    10/31/2025

    Premium Episode 20: Growing Up in the Children of God Cult feat Daniella Mestyanek Young (Unlocked)

    We’re joined by Daniella Mestyanek Young, the author of Uncultured. She was born a third generation member of an influential family, within The Family International, better known as the Children of God cult. She escaped at fifteen, put herself through school, and graduated from college as valedictorian. Daniella joined the Army, became Captain, and she received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award. She was an Intelligence Officer in one of the Army’s first Female Engagement Teams. In two tours and six years, she saw patterns in the military that were just like her experiences in the Children of God. Here are Daniella's 10 characteristics of a cult that we talk about: 1. Has a charismatic leader (and a skinny white woman) 2. A sacred assumption 3. The transcendental mission 4. Self-sacrifice of members 5. Limits access to the outside world 6. Distinguishable vernacular 7. Us versus them mentality 8. Exploits members' labor 9. High exit costs 10. Ends justify the means mentality Find Daniella online: https://twitter.com/daniellamyoung https://www.instagram.com/daniellamyoung_ https://www.tiktok.com/@daniellamestyanekyoung By Daniella's book UnCULTured https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250280114 We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts seem better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired

    1h 50m
  5. Episode 87: She’s (Still) Speaking

    10/18/2025

    Episode 87: She’s (Still) Speaking

    First up, we have some Jordan Peterson news. His daughter says he’s under spiritual attack after being exposed to a moldy attic. We also cover some of the comments Kamala Harris have been making during the book tour for her 2024 election memoir 107 Days. Reassuringly, pro-Palestine protesters have been showing up at just about every one of her tour stops. We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts seem better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music:Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    1h 18m
  6. Premium Episode 64: We'll Fight and We'll Win / Starship Troopers (Sample)

    10/13/2025

    Premium Episode 64: We'll Fight and We'll Win / Starship Troopers (Sample)

    We’re here on the eve of the end of America as we’ve come to know it, and the two of us thought, “what could be a more fitting way to honor everything we love about this country than to do one of the most American things possible?” That would be watching a movie and then arguing about it.  This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up to listen to the entire episode. patreon.com/wetwired The movie we picked to divert our attention from the machine like roll of militarism and xenophobia across the US is Paul Verhoevan’s Starship Troopers.  That means we’re talking: propaganda, fascism, more propaganda, some xenophobia, a lot of militarism, and then even more propaganda. So, essentially, we carefully chose a movie that bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to anything happening out there in the real world. This episode was born out of a conversation Jules and I had last week about a clip from Starship Troopers someone posted on Twitter. It was the scene of the cow in the lab getting gored to death by a giant bug. In that clip, a couple of guys in lab coats walk a cow into a room with one of the arachnids and then hurry out before the bug gets to them. Immediately, that seemed to me like an encapsulation of the entire movie’s message. My takeaway from that scene and the move overall that fascism is stupidly overconfident, everyone is expendable, and safety is for pussies.

    8 min
  7. Episode 86: Reply Guys at the End of History feat Jacob Gregor

    10/04/2025

    Episode 86: Reply Guys at the End of History feat Jacob Gregor

    Independent filmmaker Jacob Gregor joins us to talk about his bleak and unsettling new film End of History. We talk with Jacob about his discomforting vision of a nameless young man who drives cross country to Alaska listening to nothing but podcasts and AM radio. Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired This is the sort of man who has been living close by all along, right under your nose. You've seen him online countless times and probably didn't even notice. You didn't see him because his isn't an influencer, he's not in charge of anything, and he's never posted anything that went viral. He's a reply guy. We chat with Jacob about his character's flat arc, making this movie, and the online-too-much guys who just want everything in the world to be like it was when they were 8 years old. Find Jacob online: https://x.com/JacobGorb https://www.instagram.com/jacobgorb/ We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts seem better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. https://wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)

    57 min
  8. Premium Episode 63: Ban the Internet (Sample)

    09/18/2025

    Premium Episode 63: Ban the Internet (Sample)

    This is a sample of a premium episode. Sign up to listen to the entire episode. patreon.com/wetwired Cops, laws, prisons, and the military are political violence. Crackdowns on strikers and protesters are political violence. Poverty, hunger, and crime are all political violence. The state's will is not enforced with good vibes and polite suggestions. Its defining feature is its monopoly of violence within its borders. “Political violence” as seen on TV just lacks state sanction and operates outside the monopoly of violence of the state. The state’s policies may be determined without violent force, which is where liberals and conservatives can superficially separate themselves from political violence, by confining the term to the extracurricular activities of non-state actors.  “There is no place for violence,” and “violence is never the answer,” aren’t aphorisms from pacifist monks, sweeping the ground as they walk to save the lives of would-be squashed bugs. It’s only the pejorative “political violence” when it’s not blessed by the state and the ideology of the speaker. This framing obscures the role of violence in all political activity. It may not be outright dishonesty or hypocrisy when talking heads and heads of state are clutching their pearls after some kind of public violence, it’s just a terrible model of reality that confuses how violence is really valued in a liberal democracy. There’s an Irish aphorism, “Is minic a bhris béal duine a shorn.” Many a time a man's mouth broke his nose. Anyway, Charlie Kirk got shot last week.

    8 min
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4.7
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Culture, control, and empire

Information

  • Creator
    Sean & Jules
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    168
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Wetwired

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